Monday, December 21, 2015

Kiwi Crime with a Cypriot Twist: THE HOUR OF THE GREY WOLF

Today I've become aware of a new debut crime novel from a Whanganui-based art teacher that sounds very intriguing. THE HOUR OF THE GREY WOLF will be officially launched on 1 January, but is already available on Amazon Kindle.

It is the first crime novel from poet and artist Christodoulos Moisa, a New Zealand-born son of Cypriot immigrants to who split his childhood between the two countries, and had been an art teacher in Whanganui (a large town on the southern coast of the North Island of New Zealand) for the past quarter century. Moisa has published several volumes of poetry and short stories, as well as being an award-winning visual artist. He delves back into his own heritage with his first crime novel, which is set in 1970s Cyprus.

Here's the blurb:

The CIA and its Greek Junta proxy are gunning for Archbishop Makarios, the democratically elected first president of the Republic, and because of this a civil war, where Greek would be fighting Greek, is looming. The narrator is Steve Carpenter, a New Zealand journalist of Cypriot descent. Wounded in Vietnam where he has worked for REUTERS, he chooses to go to Cyprus to recuperate. However, as a new chapter in Cypriot history unfolds, he becomes drawn into solving a murder that occurs in Mpalloura, the village where he is living. Knowing that he may be putting his own life at risk, Carpenter gingerly delves into the deadly politics of the time and the labyrinth-like complexity of a peasant village whose inner darkness one is rarely exposed to.

Moisa lived in Cyprus during those turbulent times, so I'm very interested to see how he evokes the political climate, as well as the physical and social geography of the Mediterranean island, in his crime novel. Hopefully he will get some print copies into bookstores in New Zealand, as well as the Kindle and paperback availability online (Amazon UK has a paperback version listed).

You can read more about Moisa's artistic endeavours at his website here.